Geoff Parling making big name for himself in the line of duty for England ahead of France Six Nations clash

Geoff Parling’s wife, Elle, was not upset when she found a list of
French-sounding names with unfamiliar numbers that her husband had jotted
down furtively in a notebook. She knows that she shares her man with others,
his rugby mates and his line-out drills, so much so that she actually gave
him the notebook in his Christmas stocking.

Bearded wonder: Lock Geoff Parling is impressing for club and countryPhoto: GETTY IMAGES

Parling is England's line-out guru. He may not have gone to the lengths of former England lock Ben Kay in learning Afrikaans so that he could code-break the Springboks but he is forever on the lookout, forever scribbling. If England manage to play havoc with France’s line-out ball on Saturday at Twickenham then Elle Parling might be able to claim an assist.

Mrs Parling is not alone in being proud of the Leicester lock’s achievements over the past 12 months, even without the news on Friday that his beard had been voted as the world’s sexiest ahead of George Clooney according to a Tigers club poll.

The boy is box office in so many ways. Do not get too taken in by the image of new-age England with youth at its core and no place for old lags. It is, in fact, a team of many shades and many ages, with Parling, who will be 30 in October, the oldest in the regular starting XV. He is thriving in the company of youngsters.

“I do appreciate I seem a bit old with the likes of Joe Launchbury alongside me who looks 12,” said Parling, who spent several years ploughing his furrow at Newcastle before moving to Leicester in summer 2009. “I wanted to win things and I wanted to put myself in the spotlight.

"I loved my time at Newcastle but if you’re playing a Spanish team in the Amlin Cup and putting a hundred points on them then no one’s going to take much notice. Now, when you’re playing Toulouse in the Heineken, everyone’s looking.”

Parling insists that he has no misgivings about not making the move earlier in his career, never wondering as to what might have been. His down-to-earth Teesside persona is just one of the reasons that he is a good fit in the Stuart Lancaster set-up. He is wry, blunt, bright and personable.

He is part of a book group that Alex Goode has tried to start up, reading The Hobbit and The Hunger Games before the Saracens fullback has managed to. He likes a game of cribbage, too, although has yet to get the better of Goode on the iPad version of old board game Risk.

He only won his first cap in Lancaster’s first game in charge against Scotland at Murrayfield last season but if the tag of late developer is to be assigned to him then it is only right that the label of England’s most improved player over the past 12 months is entered alongside.

Parling has gone from being considered an honest pro to one of the Six Nations championship’s standout performers, a man who would not have featured in any experts’ Lions squads of a year ago but who is now one of the prime contenders. He is not the tallest, not the heaviest, not the most powerful but time and again he is the most prominent. Parling has made the No 5 shirt his own and it will take a mighty act to get it off his back.

“Geoff has done exceptionally well,” said Leicester’s director of rugby, Richard Cockerill. “He’s an intelligent guy who understands the line-out well. Whether he really is bright I don’t know, perhaps he’s just a good bluffer! No he is a very good line-out tactician. Physically he is not the biggest for an international lock. He’s always been that skinny fat man. But he works very hard in the gym and makes the very best of what he has got.”

It is not just that Parling is the master of the line-out, the professorial type with an on-board computer in his mind stocked with permutations. Parling has made his presence felt round the field, making yards and gleefully diving over in the corner for England’s third try against Scotland a fortnight ago.

He may not have won the judges’ top marks for the elegance of the finish but his positioning was spot on and his hands were safe in taking Owen Farrell’s wonderful wide pass.

Parling has thrived in the England environment. As others have put faith in him, so he has put faith in himself.

“After my first start, against Wales [his third cap], I remember thinking that I didn’t feel out of place, that this felt all right,” Parling said. “I don’t look back and have regrets because you just don’t know how things might have worked out. What I do know is that Joe Launchbury is a better player at 21 than I was.

"When you get to this level, it makes you realise that you’re got to work ever harder to stay there because the next Launchbury is on his way through.”

Parling acknowledged that England’s line-out malfunctioned at times against Ireland. “I take it personally and it’s something I’ve got to help fix,” he said. “You do your analysis but you can do too much, get too fixed in your mind. You’ve got to have the ability to adapt, to think on the hoof.”